First-person shooter

Another character trailer has popped up for Overwatch -- this time dealing with Soldier: 76, and it covers some rather large bits of lore. This guy is a former soldier, left for dead during the game's great war, who has...

Depth, the terrifying underwater multiplayer game which pits sharks against divers, is rolling out a ton of neat stuff this week for Shark Week.
Beginning Thursday at 10:00am PT, Depth will be free to play on Steam for the we...

Jul 04 //
Kyle MacGregor
The Legend of Alfur isn't particularly good, but I was more than willing to overlook its rough edges, at least at first. The experience pulled me in from the get-go. It begins when our protagonists, a lass named Shalnawaz and her brother Leon, are taken captive by soldiers from a neighboring kingdom. And to make matters worse, the men openly plan to sell the siblings into slavery.
Things quickly take an unexpected turn, though. One of the soldiers kills his commanding officer, then frames the siblings for the murder, forcing them to escape and fend off their pursuers.
It's just a pity that the actual game doesn't back up the intrigue of the premise. Despite being a few years old now (and being created by a small team on a limited budget), this thing was dated when it launched. It isn't pretty. At all. But its graphical shortcomings pale in comparison with the gameplay.
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While engaging in shootouts, I often found my character clipping through objects and getting caught on scenery. Hiding behind cover isn't always effective, as enemy fire can travel through boulders, hillsides, and trees. And firing back is just as troublesome, thanks to some truly awful iron sights.
Still with me? Despite those many issues, I still somehow managed to glean a bit of enjoyment out of The Legend of Alfur. It is by no means great (or the best use of $10), but the sheer novelty of an anime-style first-person shooter cannot be denied. It's something I'd honestly like to see more of.
If you'd like to see more Doujin Dojo, check back with Destructoid every weekend for more (hopefully positive) coverage of Japanese indie games and the people that make and localize them. Want us to report on something in particular? Hit me up ([email protected]) and stay tuned!

Alfur isn't so legendaryWelcome to Doujin Dojo, a new weekly column dedicated to the Japanese indie scene.
Maybe I should have started this out by gushing about Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale or Astebreed (which is now available on PS4, by the way)....

Did Destiny take itself too seriously? From my whopping hour and a half of experience with the game, I'd say so. It didn't have to be that way. Speaking to IGN, comedian and writer David Cross said he "jumped at the chance" t...

Team Fortress 2 gets a new update tomorrow called the Gun Mettle Update. To summarize, the game is taking on many ideas from its much more popular cohort, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
First of all, weapon skins...

Last week, Humble and Gearbox announced the Humble Borderlands Bundle, featuring Borderlands, Borderlands 2, a coupon for 75 percent off Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and a big chunk of downloadable content for the first two g...

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Admittedly...

You know how Cloud Imperium Games and Robert Space Industries raised more money than a small country to make its incredibly ambitious Star Citizen? You know how it was going to have space trading, massive spaceships, dogfight...

DICE has been emailing invites to the Star Wars Battlefront alpha on Origin. Well, more accurately, these are invites to apply for the alpha (which can be done here). No guarantees you'll get in, as "space in the Closed Alpha...

Jordan got some hands-on time with Battleborn at E3, and while his write up does a good job of laying down the basics, sometimes it's helpful to see a video in order to really get how a game plays. Now us poor, decrepit non-...

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According to the latest Bungie update, however, the reason for their i...

With all of the stops to carefully pan the camera, you know this is an E3 demo, but the upgraded lighting in Shadow Warrior 2 does look nice. Demons aside, I'd like to retire here.
Lo Wang spouts a bunch of cheesy lines, as ...

Today is just a Borderlands day, it would seem. Not only did the third episode of the stellar Tales from the Borderlands release today, but now we have word that the mainline loot-shooters will be doing the whole Humble Bund...

Jun 22 //
Jordan Devore
The goal is to either score 1,000 points, collectively, or take down the opposing team's core after capturing enough points for map control. In the former case, you can be out there doing your own thing, earning points, and working toward big purchases. I saved up for the bipedal Mantis mech and stomped on some foes until hubris (and several Spartans) got the better of me.
I tried once to engage a Promethean boss alone and that went south real fast. Similarly, tackling the exposed core at the enemy's HQ without sufficient backup is ill-advised. But whatever we did, it worked. The other team failed to get more than a couple hundred points. Had it pulled together and taken down our core while we were distracted, the match could've gone the other way.
I'm not so into the series these days, and I didn't come into the session with an especially cheerful mindset. But I dug Warzone overall. The maps were big -- I felt like I had to chase after battles from time to time -- but I otherwise enjoyed the mode. Curious about the game's REQ System.
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24 players vs. each other and the AIWhile E3 didn't officially start until last Tuesday, there was plenty of video game stuff happening in and around Los Angeles the day before (and even the day before that!). Covering press conferences from Microsoft, Electron...

There's so much to talk about in the first minute or two alone.
Going in on mechanical Apartheid. Sexy leather pants. Jensen's spiky ass designer facial hair (and skull hair). The fucking Illuminati!!! A game that isn't piss...

Jun 22 //
Jordan Devore
Combat isn't anything new for the genre, but after you take enough people out and pick up orbs from fallen foes, you're put into an overdrive mode. It's at this point you need to make a mad dash toward the top of the map where there are ramps leading up to a giant hoop. Jump down through the goal as if you were a basketball to score, but watch out for incoming fire and melee attacks.
If and when your mech is destroyed, you'll eject and skyrocket to the top of the map. You can take in the scenery, or get straight back into the action by looking at one of a few colored spawn points and confirming with a button press. Given the immersion of VR, free-falling felt awesome.
Had the game just been standard team-based combat centered on blowing up mechs, I wouldn't have thought much of it. This mode, Power Slam, really was the best way to introduce it. RIGS won't be a compelling enough reason to own a Morpheus by itself, but it's a good starting point.

'Basketball with guns'Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and virtual reality -- those were the two things, by far, I most enjoyed at this year's E3. Steven did an exceptional job of capturing the essence of the former, so now it's on me to ...

The Solus Project is a "single-player survival game by Teotl Studios (The Ball, Unmechanical) and Grip Games, coming to PC and Xbox One in early 2016." It basically sounds like the upcoming Matt Damon movie The Martian. Dead...

One unlikely Wii U game looks like it'll be reanimated with an Xbox One port, Ubisoft's ZombiU. An Australian Rating Classification board listing for "Zombi (Xbox One)" is a good hint that Ubisoft intends to repackage the unp...

In order to continue the hype-train coverage that is so much of the norm for today's AAA mega franchises (and probably lesser games too), this hot-off-the-presses marketing video for Call of Duty Black Ops III will take you on a 13-minute tour of the "cooperative campaign with the Cyber Core tutorial."
Sit back, relax, and let the sounds of war bathe you in a warming glow.

Let's hear it straight from EidosThere's been a negative reaction online to Eidos Montreal's use of the racially-charged term "mechanical Apartheid" in its promotion of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
Speaking with Destructoid today, we asked the title's Exec...

At the PC gaming stream tonight, Tripwire Interactive and Antimatter Games revealed a new shooter. Rising Storm 2: Vietnam is going to have to walk a fine line; it's going to have to take a different tack than a lot of milit...

We saw a bit of Star Wars Battlefront's competitive multiplayer earlier today, but at Sony's press conference tonight, Patrick Bach of DICE showed off its cooperative survival mode. A small team of rebels fight off the Imper...

Treyarch showed competitive multiplayer for Call of Duty: Black Ops III as well as the game's four-person co-op campaign at Sony's E3 2015 press conference. The former had wallrunning and sliding all over the place while the...

[Update: watch some footage of the campaign below.]
Today at its E3 conference in LA, Microsoft revealed a brand new mode for Halo 5 called "Warzone." It basically looks like PlanetSide, Halo-style. and features tons of...

Arkane Studios announced Dishonored 2 on Bethesda's E3 2015 stream, featuring the option to play as a female protagonist named Emily Kaldwin. In the trailer Emily takes on four-armed robots, and she does some cool shadow pow...

Jun 13 //
Nic Rowen
Better stealth
I'm going to take for granted that better gunplay is a given for Fallout 4. The awkward, inaccurate shooting of Fallout 3 was probably the most common complaint about it, and New Vegas' attempt to address it with a janky iron-sights system was so rough and amateurish that it felt like a hacked together mod. Fallout 4 will obviously have to do better in the guns-and-ammo category, so I'm not going to waste my breath begging for it.
What I will beg for though, is better stealth design.
Some of the best moments in Bethesda's games have emerged from the shadows. The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood had the best quests in Oblivion and Skyrim, encouraging many players to roll up at least one sneaky character. I know I personally spent a huge chunk of my time in Fallout 3 trying to skulk through super-mutant camps, silently seeding the area with mines and booby traps before pulling down on some mutant and watching the chaos pop off as his buddies came running.
When done well, the tension and power dynamics of stealth can provide some of the best gameplay around. Bethesda seems to know this. It includes so many quests and options in its games that encourage you to be a sneaky little jerk. So why does sneaking around feel like some after-thought, Scooby Doo bullshit?
The old "crouch down and watch an icon that tells you if a raider can see you or not" routine isn't going to cut it anymore. Stealth should be more than a factor of your sneak stat and a matter of breaking line of sight. I'm really not interested in another stealth experience that allows enemies to pick you off from 50 yards away in the dark like you were holding a road flare if your sneak skill is low, or let you squat down straight in front of their shins like you're the Invisible Man if the skill is pushing 90 and above. Make stealth active, give us something to do to make us feel sneaky.
Instead of making the Sneak skill and active camouflage gear the end-all-be-all of stealth, how about throwing in some active abilities to let us dynamically manipulate the enemy? They don't have to be complicated. Take a page from the Far Cry games and give players with a moderate skill investment in stealth the ability to throw a distracting rock or bullet casing to draw enemies away. Make some cubbyholes or hiding spots that only intermediate ninjas can use. Let Sneak-Kings focus down like Joel from The Last Of Us and get some "I'm super good at hearing" ghetto-SONAR ability.
I'm not asking for Metal Gear Fallout: Sons of the Atom Bomb or anything here. I understand that in a game as big and complex as the Fallout games have been, you can't layer on every little system and nuance you'd like (that's what paid mods are for, am I right folks?) but I'd like to see something to make crawling around in the shadows fresh for Fallout 4.
More skill checks please, but keep them quiet
One of the things I love, love, LOVED about New Vegas was its focus on non-combat skills. Reaching back to the original Fallout, New Vegas went out of its way to incorporate skills like barter, repair, and science outside of their obvious (and boringly pragmatic) purposes way more than Fallout 3 did. This is without a doubt the right direction to move in and I would love to see Fallout 4 double down on the idea.
I love this idea because it makes each character feel unique. My tech obsessed teenaged hacker had a much different experience in the Mojave Wasteland than my cannibalistic night stalker. Not just because she preferred to melt her worries away with a stream of molten plasma while he would literally cut to the heart of a problem; they moved through the world differently, physically and socially.
She would hack into systems, open doors, appropriate security drones, all that good, typically sneaky stuff. But she was also able to use her skills as a currency, occasionally repairing broken gear or fixing otherwise unsolvable problems for people in the Wasteland. She fell in with the equally tech obsessed Brotherhood of Steel and it felt natural. My cannibal used his detailed knowledge of anatomy to occasionally work as a makeshift surgeon, appearing as a wolf in sheep's clothing to the unaware, and was invited into a cabal of secret people eaters. Each of them had opportunities and moments that were totally unique and exclusive from each other and that's amazing. That's exactly what Fallout should be about.
I just don't want to know about it up front.
I would love a little more subtlety and mystery when it comes to skill checks in Fallout 4. As I loved how New Vegas worked, I couldn't help but find the giant, full caps skill messages jarring. Nothing quite reminds you "oh yeah, you're playing a videogame" like a big old block of mechanical text that says something like [MEDICINE 60 REQUIRED].
Fold skill checks into the game more organically. If a player doesn't have the skill required to pull something off, don't show the option. Or, maybe show the option, but don't promise success. Let Prof. Goofus with his measly 15 points invested in repair set off a bomb when he tries to defuse it. Let someone who thinks they're a smooth talker chat their way into a slaver's pen.
I know some people may prefer to know their options up front and the stats they should shoot for, but I'm a big believer in surprises and trusting the player to figure things out. Besides, if you really want to know the stat requirements for every interaction, there are always wikis and FAQs.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe make it a little darker?
Okay, hold on. Don't go branding me with the mark of #Darksiders2 just yet. I'm not asking for Fallout 40K edition here and I'm not saying I want some grim and dirty "realistic" depiction of a blasted out radioactive wasteland, because realism wouldn't do the game many favors. All I want to see is Bethesda even out the tone. Make the normal world a little darker and saner so the black humor and absurd moments can pop in contrast.
I love the line Fallout walks, that razors edge between unimaginable despair and corny '50s sci-fi pulp. It's a difficult balance to find and while I think both Fallout 3 and New Vegas did a decent job at it, I think they could have done better. I think the problem is that neither game is willing to let you get your feet under you before piling up the silly stuff.
Fallout 3 starts in a Vault isolated from the realities of the world, so I'm willing to put up with the greaser shenanigans of the Tunnel Snakes. But then the first town you come across in the real world, Megaton, is full of equally goofy shit and ridiculous people. You go from one silly place to another without a big change in tone when the game could have set you up for a gut punch by showing you a very zany life in the Vault and then plunging you into the harshness of the wastes.
New Vegas starts its story by introducing you to Victor, a robotic cowboy with a TV in his chest and machine guns in his arms like a very well armed Teletubby. Again, don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a robot cowboy, but couldn't we wait five dang minutes to establish the stakes and condition of this post-apocalyptic world before saddling up on the wacky horse?
When you come across a crashed alien saucer, find a settlement of pacifist super-mutants, or liberate a slave mine with Lincoln's very own rifle, it should be a hell of a moment, not business as usual in the wastes. Fallout 3 and New Vegas come at you with the bizarre and ludicrous so hard and so often that it runs the risk of losing its impact and blurring together. I'd like to see Fallout 4 avoid that if possible. Don't get rid of the black humor and ridiculous moments, just space them out a little more, or make the average day in the wastes a little more grounded so they can stand out better.
Going by the very sombre trailer we've seen, I may just get my wish on this one.
How about you?
What are you looking forward to in Fallout 4? What kind of perks do you want to see? What kind of companions? How much are you hoping all these rumors about a voiced protagonist and a very focused main-plot with a mandatory male character are black and filthy lies? I know I am!
Hopefully we'll find out more at Bethesda's big event tomorrow. Then we can either sing the praises or count our dead.

We'll find out soon enoughI'm a huge Fallout nerd. I can wax poetic about the Fallout games and how much they mean to me all day (I've done it before), so to say I'm looking forward to what Bethesda does with Fallout 4 is a little bit of an understatement.
I do have some requests though. A wish list of things I would personally like to see in the next installment.

Jun 12 //
Jordan Devore
Sure, the copious amounts of loot are gone. And this isn't a wasteland -- it's the last star in the universe. But damn, Battleborn really will feel and sound familiar to Borderlands players despite having an extended cast of 25 playable characters. The roster has the diversity of a typical MOBA lineup, and the rate at which you're leveling up and acquiring new abilities matches that genre.
First, Gearbox and 2K had us watch a group of people play a level to, uh, show us how it's done. Then we played that same level. Then we played it again. Then we played it a third time. The intention was to highlight the variation in characters, I guess -- and there's plenty -- but the format also reminded me how grating funny dialogue often becomes on repeated playthroughs.
Our short slice of the campaign was set on a snowy area with suitably solemn music. It was mostly linear, with wider areas interspersed for larger engagements. I first chose a gentlemanly robot sniper who could call in an owl. He was great at safely taking down our primary foe -- alien monsters called the Varelsi -- from afar while my four co-op partners soaked up damage.
After that, I picked a vampire-looking samurai with twin blades. He was ferocious, but I kept managing to lose my shields and then my health and then I needed to be revived. Sorry about that! I'm squishy! Even if I didn't quite get a handle on how to play him well, I still enjoyed the first-person slicing. On my third playthrough, I went with a witch who shot dark energy out of her four arms and could open portals from which hellish things would leak out. I liked her.
Leveling up occurs regularly. Again, think Dota 2 or League of Legends. Instead of separate skill trees like in Borderlands, you're presented with a single either-or decision, one for each of your ten levels. You're able to choose between things like increased shields or higher weapon damage, and boost certain abilities over others. If you're like me, you'll wish you could just have every upgrade.
As for mission objectives, the preview build was a lot of pushing forward, wiping out every enemy. Eventually, we had to protect a spider mech guy as he trundled along to his final destination where an inevitable boss battle took place. Along the way, we picked up shards from chests and fallen foes that could be spent on upgrading the mech's offensive or defensive capabilities as well as turrets during the final fight. Doing so seemed unnecessary, but I'm sure we were playing on one of the friendlier difficulty settings and that it can get real tough if you want a challenge.
While I didn't get to see much of Battleborn, I'm more into it than I thought I would be as someone who isn't particularly crazy about Borderlands. I think it's the gunplay, which feels tighter here.
There's also more care-free room for experimentation in terms of character selection and how you want to build them out. I'm unsure about the PvP, but I'll probably want to round up four friends to run through the story mode when this releases on PC, PS4, and Xbox One this year.

Hands-on impressions of the story mode[Disclosure: Years ago, Aaron Linde used to write for Destructoid. He now works on Battleborn at Gearbox Software. As always, no relationships, personal or professional, were factored into this preview.]
To sum up Battleborn ...

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